CHAPTER XXIX. OSBERNE AND HIS MEN RETURN TO WETHERMEL.
NOW on a fair evening a little ere sunset of the beginning of October, came those Dalesmen amongst the black rocks and rough places that crowned the bent which looked down west over the Dale. And now, though they had been talking merrily and loud for the last three hours, their hearts were so full within them that scarce a word might they say one to another. And when at last they had won through that rocky tangle and had opened Wethermel, and nought lay before them but the grassy slopes and the wide-spread valley cleft by the line of the Sundering Flood; now, when they saw in the clear air the grey houses of Wethermel lying together, and the smoke of the evening cooking-fires going up to the heavens, and the sheep wending on, thick and huddling before the driving of three tall men, and the kine moving towards the byre and the women amongst them, then this befell: that whereas they had been all of one mind that when they came to the crown of the bent they would spur on and race merrily toward Wethermel, yet now when it lay before them, and there was so little a way betwixt them and its hearth, they all of them with one consent drew rein and sat still on their horses, as if they had suddenly come face to face with the host of
